GAZA CITY, May 15 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The Israeli occupation army flattened more than a hundred Palestinian houses in a two-day demolition spree in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, driving over 1,000 Palestinians homeless.

"On entering the camp this morning, we found 88 buildings demolished which had housed 206 families. It affects 1,064 people," said U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman Paul McCann.

"This is incredibly intense. It is probably one of the worst days of the Intifada for Rafah which has already been hit very hard," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The demolitions and the resulting increase of homeless Palestinians coincided with the Nakba Day, the day when Israel was created 65 years ago on the lands of Palestine.

On Friday, May 14, UNRWA has described the situation in Rafah as a "humanitarian catastrophe".

Since the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, UNRWA statistics show that Rafah has suffered severely from the Israeli house demolition policy, with more than 11,000 people made homeless.

Palestinian security forces and rights groups condemned the Israeli demolitions, widely slammed as a collective punishment measure.

The Independent quoted an AP's resident correspondent in Rafah as saying "frantic Palestinian residents fled their homes waving white flags and carrying valuables in cartons and plastic bags. They even took away furniture, doors and window frames".

"This is a humanitarian catastrophe and a war crime," Rashid Abu Shbak, head of the Palestinian Preventive Security in Gaza.

"The army destroyed roads, electricity and water supplies in the camp. They have destroyed everything," he said in a statement faxed to AFP.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) earlier said more than 100 buildings were destroyed in Rafah, on the border with Egypt.

The Israeli army insisted Saturday that the comprehensive raid was limited to the task of finding the remains of soldiers killed Wednesday.

It denied the measure was part of a government scheme to widen the security zone round the border patrol road where the dead soldiers' troop carrier was blown up, reported the British daily.

A Palestinian woman waving a white flag to be able to leave her house before Israeli bulldozers flatten it

On Thursday, Israel said it would bulldoze  "hundreds of houses" to widen the buffer zone in a bid to secure its patrols and prevent resistance fighters from using what it calls "tunnels to smuggle weapons".

The body of another Palestinian was discovered early Saturday under the rubble of his destroyed home, Palestinian medics told AFP.